Consulting HAL

The father, George, has a dilemma. His life is rather busy, so he doesn't have much time for his kids, which he is ratted on about. Ann seems to have the strongest issues.

One of the kids, Tom, finds an article in Modern Science covering "I Sing The Body Electric", a process of making a robotic 'mother substitute'.

The family goes to Facsimile Limited, who is the creator of this. Boy, it's creepy with all of the body parts and features around the room. It's super spoopy I say. Not just spooky, but spoopy! I think the mother might be either dead or gone.

The next morning, a woman in black walks up to the house and meets the kids in the front lawn. This is their new 'Grandma'. Karen and Tom are excited to meet Grandma, but Ann is extremely wary.

Ann is acting a lot like Spooner. It appears that Mom did indeed run off. Except she's dead, by suicide?

Grandma proves her love for Ann pushing her out of the way of the car, and she survives. "That's my job to live forever!" Death = Running Away?

Time passes, and the children are grown up to college aged, and Grandmother has to return to Facsimile, either to live with another family or join the 'room of voices'.

Compared to all of the other stories I've experienced, this is so sweet and nice. I almost cried. Because I'm a sentimental old high schooler. ;)

"More Twilight Zone? Indeed.I think I read a summary of this episode before. There's a family whose son has powers over reality.Da da da dun, da da da dun.

Oh my gosh! Parts of this episode's intro was used in Threatened, a Michael Jackson song from Invincible. Why would this be chosen, I wonder.And they call teenagers monsters. "That's real fine, Anthony. That's real fine."

Could there be a deeper meaning to this? Hmm. Some dark insight into the subconscious mind.

​"It's real nice. It's real good." This is disturbing. This is disturbing. "A real good day."Too much positivity is harmful, especially since no one is brave enough to discipline the god-child.

Wishes are powerful. "You're everybody's favorite." Burn every one who doesn't like the god-child! Burn them all! Or send them to the cornfield!

Fear is a powerful motivator. I suppose that's why they keep it up. Adults shall fear the god-child.

Could Anthony have a disorder or is he just a control freak? He doesn't like singing, he shut up his aunt because she did. He makes monstrous animals, like the three headed gopher. Then he killed it. Fire, torture/killing of small animals, two out of the three sings of a potential psychopath.

Dan Morris has cracked or he's drunk or both. How could a mother kill her child, even if they are a monster?

I can't even imagine what it would be like, to be in constant fear of your offspring. To walk on a virtual minefield every time you're around them. Explosions at any time.

Back to the Twilight zone, all right! I read the short story - oh, wait, this is different.

We have ourselves a grumpy smoker for a lead and a robot servant out in space. Then a flashback to Earth and aliens have landed. A representative arrives at the UN and dang, he is tall.

"Counting hands when we should have watched the calendar."

Wait, now it's the beginning? I'm sure it will make sense later. Hamburger guy, couldn't you wait for the lunch break? It's noon, I remember, so sorry sir. (The French ambassador's accent is bad, in my opinion.)

These aliens plan to assist us. Force fields, an end to famine, utopia. "Simply trust us."Yeah, bad things are probably going to happen.

Smoking guy talks with two other men. Then Penny comes with the book that the Canibit alien rep left. The title is known, 'To Serve Man'.

Now a massive group of people are watching an alien be lie-detected. He's being completely honest. Oh, Kanabits. That's the right spelling.

No more wars, no more deserts. Humans can visit the Kanabit planet? Utterly wonderful, they believe. "One full holiday." a man says.

Humans are quite adaptable it seems, so Smoker says to Penny the translator.

Cannibal aliens! Oh, nein! Actually, I already had that idea. Mr. Chambers (Smoker) protests on the ship by not eating, but now he does.

Juan Enriquez's TED talk begins by talking about the economy. To be honest, I'm a little lost here. What I do know is that we are in a bad place.Retiring later, capping, cutting, some other stuff.

Next is the 'bigger wave', technology. The main points in this area are engineering ourselves, engineering tissues, and robots. Biology Radioshack, controllable cells.Wintergreens and bananas? Wine elements in beer, cancer fighting beer. We can grow body parts ,like bladders, ears, and teeth. The power of stem cells!

Boston Dynamics Big Dog is one robot that I've seen earlier. It's a little spooky when it moves, but it's still cool. Gecko and fly bots. Cyborgs are on the way too. The disabled become able and then superhuman. Homo superior, or as Prof. Enriquez says, Homo evolus.

Should mankind be allowed to evolve themselves and other species? That sounds like a recipe for disaster in my opinion. I've read and watched enough sci-fi stories to know that. We would probably be removing the best parts of ourselves, perhaps what makes us all human in the first place.

Sorry for my disjointed thoughts for most of this post, it's hard to type and watch a video at the same time. Multitasking is difficult when one is intensely researching.

A woman living alone in a farmhouse silently working, then a siren pierces the night. Violent tremors shake the foundation and the woman falls to the floor. A few moments later, she rises. It came from above.

Our protagonist goes to investigate. She enters an upstairs room and a mysterious beeping drones. Further inspection reveals its origin at a frisbee shaped metal object, an unidentified flying object. She watches in terror as a hatch opens from the side. Its passenger, a miniature figure dresses in an odd space suit attacks.

She evades the assault, hiding behind a beam. Her courage mostly restored, she continues the search. Finding the small man in a closet, the woman screams and slams the door. The phone rings, but her intents to retreat the upstairs room are thwarted by another attack?

Agony, terror, confusion. That infernal beeping. Where did they come from? Why are they hurting her? Why her? She's got to get them out. Save herself.

She takes a hatchet to that metal abomination. Chops it again, and again, and again. It must be destroyed.

A transmission: "This planet is inhabited by giants! Do not retaliate!"

She gives a final, critical blow. The ship and its crew are dead. The camera pans out to reveal 'US Air Force' stencilled on the spacecraft. The intruders were human.

(There may be a few errors in this synopsis. I know for sure that I hadn't realized there were two 'invaders'. I must have missed that when I was writing this post.)

*****

If it were not for the twist ending, The Invaders would have been a simple story about an old(?) woman fighting off tiny aliens. Technically, that's still the case, but the fact that the aliens were members of the United States Air Force adds a unique, curious element.

Who were those two men? Why had they visited this planet? Was their visit a mission of peace or war? What year is it? Why did they arrive in a flying saucer and not a shuttle?

Thus this episode of Twilight Zone presents us with a great example of an ambiguous ending.